The Right Choice
by Randa
Summary: Jackie looks through an old yearbook with her two daughters.


1 Title: The Right Choice  
  
Author: Randa  
  
Disclaimor: I own nothing but Amanda, Stacy, and the plot.  
  
  
  
Standing in the doorway of their room, Jackie smiled at her two daughters. Stacy and Amanda were ten and eleven years old, and both looked just like their father. The two girls had light brown hair, and smiles that made their mother want to do anything they asked. It made discipline a major problem, because they also had their mother's dark brown eyes, which their father had always been a sucker for.  
  
At the moment, the two girls were stretched out on the floor in the small but comfortable bedroom, looking through their mother's old yearbooks. Stacy let out a high pitched giggle. "Look at this guy's hair! He looks like he got in a fight with a hair drier!"  
  
"Let me see!" Amanda squealed. She grabbed hold of the yearbook and tried to pull it away from her sister. Stacy held firm.  
  
"You can see in a minute," she said loudly. "I'm not through looking yet!"  
  
Jackie winced. Also just like their mother and father, they fought constantly. As the two girls' struggles turned more violent, Jackie rushed to intervene. "Okay, chicks, break it up." She said in her best "mom" voice. "You know that you aren't supposed to go through my closet."  
  
"Oh, come on, Mom," Stacy, the more daring of the two, whined. "We just wanted to see how pretty you were in high school."  
  
Oh… damn. How was she supposed to argue with that? With a defeated sigh, she sat down between her two little brats. "And how do I rate?"  
  
"Oh, you were beautiful Mommy," Amanda sighed, looking wistfully at her mother. She was a very pretty girl, with liquid dark eyes and her mother's complexion, but she couldn't seem to see past the fact that she was about thirty pounds overweight.  
  
Stacy, picking up on her sister's sadness, smiled at her. "You look just like Mom in that picture, Mandy," she said, pointing at a picture of Jackie in her cheerleading uniform. Amanda smiled shyly, and Jackie made a mental note to buy a box of Stacy's favorite cake mix tomorrow.  
  
"Is this Aunt Donna?" Amanda asked incredulously, pointing at a picture of Jackie and the old basement gang.  
  
Jackie grinned. "You bet it is. Didn't she look awful in those lumberjack clothes?" Stacy giggled, and Amanda looked at them disapprovingly.  
  
"Hey! I have a shirt just like that! And, I bet that a flannel shirt and jeans are a lot more comfy than those business suits she always has to wear are." To Amanda, "lumberjack" clothes were the only decent dress in the world.  
  
Jackie and Stacy exchanged a "yeah, but it's not worth the fashion suicide" look, but kept silent.  
  
"Hey! Here's Daddy!" Amanda shouted gleefully. "Look at how funny his clothes are!"  
  
"Hey!" Jackie scolded. "I loved him in that shirt!"  
  
It was Amanda and Stacy's turn to share a look.  
  
"Here's Uncle Fez and Uncle Eric," Jackie pointed out.  
  
The girls stared.  
  
"Oh my gosh," Stacy laughed. "they look so silly!"  
  
Jackie grinned. They did look pretty weird in their striped bell-bottoms, making faces at the camera. She remembered yelling at them for ruining the picture. Not that she wasn't justified. They had totally stolen her spotlight.  
  
"Hey," Amanda frowned. "Who's this guy sitting beside you, Mom?"  
  
Jackie winced. She had been hoping that they wouldn't notice Him. "Oh," she struggled for an answer that didn't give too much away. "That's just a boy that Mommy used to know."  
  
Stacy and Amanda looked at her impatiently.  
  
"Mom, you only talk about yourself in the third person when you don't want us to know something," Stacy accused.  
  
"Yeah," Amanda seconded. "Spill it."  
  
Jackie sighed. "Well, there's really nothing to spill. I thought I was in love with him for a long time, but there were just too many problems. Him not feeling the same about me a major one. In the end, he married another girl, and I married your father."  
  
"Wow, Mom had an unrequited love. He was really handsome," Stacy sighed.  
  
Amanda frowned and slapped her on the shoulder. "He's nowhere as handsome as Daddy!"  
  
Jackie frowned at Amanda. "Knock it off, chick!" Then she grinned. "But when you're right, you're right. You're Daddy blows the socks off of every guy I've ever met, including this one. Besides he was a major jerk."  
  
The two girls laughed.  
  
"Actually, he does look kind of girly," Stacy admitted. "Look at how long his eyelashes are!"  
  
"I'll second that," came a new, rather sarcastic, voice from the doorway.  
  
Jackie looked up and grinned at her husband. "And how long have you been lurking over there?"  
  
"I wasn't lurking," he replied, frowning. "I just happened to be walking by, and—"  
  
"You heard us talking about Michael, and you just had to stand there and see what we'd say about you," Jackie cut him off, standing up and walking toward him, smiling that flirtatious smile that had done him in so many years ago. "And you say I'm the conceited one?"  
  
"You are the conceited one," Steven growled, meeting her halfway and slipping an arm around her waist. "I don't know why I married you."  
  
"Oh really?" Jackie giggled, sliding her hands up to play in his curly brown hair. "I do." And with that, she pulled him down for a long, lingering kiss.  
  
"Oh, yeah," Steven muttered, and this time he was the one to kiss her.  
  
From the bed, both girls let out a chorus of "Yucks" and Stacy told them to "get a room." But both of them were smiling.  
  
And, across the room, with her face pressed against her Steven's chest and her arm's wrapped tight around his neck, Jackie smiled too. Life didn't get much better than this.  
  
  
  
Written May 13, 2002 


End file.
